


blue moon

by waveydnp



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Late Night Conversations, M/M, One Night Stands, Tour Fic, references to drunk sex, that turn into more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 14:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15996881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waveydnp/pseuds/waveydnp
Summary: it's storming in the middle of the night in a city not his own and phil's phone is dead, which means he has no choice but to slink back to the flat he's just snuck out of... the flat of the once-famous youtuber with whom he's just had his very first one night stand





	blue moon

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much to my betas mandy and zan <3

Heavy rain beats against the window as Phil sits on the edge of the bed, looking around the darkened room and trying to remember where he’d tossed his shirt. And his jeans. And his socks. And his pants.

Then again it may not actually have been him that did the tossing. He’s a little fuzzy on the details. He’s half asleep and maybe still a little tipsy and he’s sat stark naked with his legs dangling over the edge of a stranger's mattress. 

Well, not quite a stranger, but close enough. He turns to check but said almost-stranger is still fast asleep, rolled over on his side with the duvet pulled up over his shoulders. 

As Phil tiptoes around the room searching for his clothes, he silently berates himself for being stupid enough to fall asleep. Actually, maybe he should be berating himself for sleeping with someone he’d only just met, but he’s not sorry about that, not really. 

Dan’s not _really_ a stranger to Phil. They’ve never met before but Phil’s known about him for something like ten years now. Looked up to him even, for a while. Aspired to emulate his success, back when that was something Phil thought might be possible for him. 

At one point in time he would’ve definitely called himself a fan. Which probably technically makes him a groupie now. Great. 

Finally, finally, he finds his blue Calvins behind a chair in the corner of the room and he is reminded of the eagerness Dan had shown in pulling them down and walking Phil backwards to the bed. A little shiver of heat rushes through him at the memory.

He’s never done anything like this. He’s still not sure how he feels about it, but he can’t deny to himself that it was unnervingly hot. He pulls his pants up over a dick that’s already threatening to harden at the recollection of the warmth of Dan’s mouth. He wills himself not to be so entirely pathetic and sets about collecting the pieces of his outfit that’ve been scattered across the room.

It’s rather a small room in rather a small flat, much smaller than Phil would have expected from a former YouTube star, but then, it’s not like Phil had ever made any money from his own videos so maybe he’s just being ignorant. He hadn’t been in the right frame of mind to notice the flat before, but he’s noticing now. It’s small and rather sparse, but still nice. Lightning flashes outside, illuminating everything around him for a split second.

The details of the room paint the beginnings of a picture Phil kind of wishes he could see more of. Fairy lights twinkle around the headboard of the bed, a Kanye West poster pasted onto the wardrobe beside the window. The duvet is the same one it had been all those years ago in his videos, checkered black and white squares. 

Something about that is so endearing to Phil. He still has his own old bedspread that a few people out in the world may recognize from days long past when he’d tried to share bits of his life with the internet, but he doesn’t actually use it anymore. It’s folded up and tucked away, a keepsake from a different life kept safe in the back of a closet in his parents’ house. 

Well, his house too. 

Dan stirs then, sighing deeply and Phil’s heart thumps hard against his ribs. Instinctively, he ducks down into a crouch, as if hiding would be a sensible solution to the potential awkwardness of having to converse with Dan now that they’re not drunk and pawing at each other. 

Luckily he’s spared multiple different kinds of mortification and Dan doesn’t wake up, just rolls over onto his back and throws his arm over his eyes in his sleep. Phil has to remind himself that he’s on a mission to get dressed and make a hasty retreat, because when he looks at Dan all sleepy and cozy and breathing soft and deep like that, all he really wants to do is climb back in bed and wrap his arms around him.

And that’s crazy, right? That’s not what this was. 

His jeans are in a heap just inside Dan’s bedroom door. He pulls them on and jumps when there’s a loud clap of thunder outside. Normally he loves storms, but tonight the knowledge that he has to go out in it and try to get a car to pick him up and take him out to Rawtenstall in what is surely the early hours of the morning has his stomach clenching anxiously. 

He feels his pockets to make sure his phone and wallet are still safely nestled inside. They are. His socks are at the foot of the bed, right next to Dan’s. Luckily his are mismatched and multicoloured where Dan’s are black, so he doesn’t have to expend too much energy determining whose are whose. He pulls them on as more lightning flashes outside. 

Dan stirs again when the ensuing thunder claps. That one was a loud one, but Dan still doesn’t wake. Phil knows he needs to get the hell out, but he can’t find his goddamn shirt anywhere. Surely he must have been wearing a shirt. He hadn’t come down to Manchester to meet Ian and Lauren with no shirt.

He tries not to think about the fact that he definitely wasn’t wearing any type of coat. Even if he does locate his shirt and manage to find a car to pick him up this late in weather this bad, he’s going to get absolutely soaked. And possibly struck by lightning.

The bed creaks and Phil panics, his feet carrying him out of the room quickly of their own accord. It turns out to be for the best because it’s then that he sees his red flannel shirt in a heap on the floor of the hallway. Again he flashes back to a few hours earlier, to Dan pushing him up against the wall and kissing his neck as he fumbled to get the buttons undone. 

He scoops the shirt up off the floor and throws it on, jamming his feet into his shoes at the doorway. He’s just finishing buttoning it up as he steps out and closes the door to Dan’s flat behind him. He feels strangely guilty for slinking away in the middle of the night and leaving the door unlocked, but also a profound relief that he won’t have to endure any awkward, stilted morning-after conversation. 

He’s really not that great at conversation with people he doesn’t know. It’s a wonder he’d even ended up in this situation at all. Then he has another pang of guilt remembering he’d essentially abandoned the friends he’d been here to see in the first place. He’d left them at their booth in the pub in favour of drinking and flirting with Dan and eventually letting him take him home.

He’ll have to apologize profusely tomorrow, though he suspects they’ll be more impressed than anything else. Ian will take the piss and Lauren will probably ask for details. 

The lift doors are just closing when he thinks to pull out his phone to call a taxi. His brain still feels cloudy and muddled with sleep and the hint of a hangover and the weirdness of this night’s events.

He’s yanked into full on lucidity though when he presses the home button on his phone and the screen remains black. His stomach sinks. It’s dead. 

Fuck. 

His hands are clammy and his mind racing for a solution when the lift doors open and he steps out into the lobby. He vaguely remembers Dan leading him through a pretty courtyard with trees and a fountain that misted water into their faces on the way here, but there’s no sign of it now. All he can see through the floor to ceiling glass windows is an absolutely torrential downpour. 

He can hear it too. It’s loud, like a million little waterfalls are being released from the clouds just to taunt him. And that’s not even to mention the ridiculous cracks of thunder that seem to just keep coming. 

He walks over to the glass wall and leans his forehead against it, staring out at the flooded world in front of him and trying not to panic. What the actual fuck is he going to do? He’s in a part of town he’s never been. He has no phone to call a car. He has no coat to protect him from the tidal wave of water outside. 

He supposes he could wander around until he finds the train station, but even then he’d have to wait til morning for it to be running again. He can’t remember Ian and Lauren’s address. He doesn’t even remember their mobile numbers. He always just clicks their names in his contacts. 

He closes his eyes. The glass is cool against his face which is nice but he’s definitely starting to panic now. Could he just stay here in the lobby all night until the sun comes up or the rain stops?

Then, as if on cue, a security guard comes up behind him seemingly out of nowhere. Phil jumps when the man asks sternly, “Can I help you, sir?”

“Oh f— uhh, no. Sorry. I was gonna go out… but—” He gestures to the rain. 

The bloke nods. “Really coming down out there. Probably best not to go out unless it’s an emergency.”

“Yeah, sure. Yeah. I’ll just—” He steps around the man and gestures to the lift. “Just go back to bed I guess.” 

The guy nods. “Have a good night.”

Phil forces a smile and slinks back to the lift and presses the up arrow. When the doors open he steps inside and collapses back against the wall when the doors close again. “Fuck,” he says, out loud. “Fuckity fuck fuck.”

He has no choice now. He has to do the one thing he hadn’t even considered in the list of the most outlandish possibilities. He has to go back to Dan’s flat.

He’s not sure he’d even remember which flat was Dan’s if not for the fact that it’s directly to the right of the lift. He does remember the eighteenth floor, though. He remembers Dan saying something about the view from his balcony all the way up there. 

He stands in front of Dan’s door for a long time debating the best way to go about what promises to be an utterly humiliating experience. Should he knock? He knows for a fact the door is unlocked. Would it be better to just slip back into Dan’s bed and pretend he’d never left? Or maybe he could sneak inside and find a phone charger and just hide in the toilet until his phone has enough power to call Ian and beg him for a ride?

But no. That would be insane. Avoiding an awkward conversation is surely not worth the risk of breaking into a man’s flat. 

It’s only the fear of being caught on security camera looking like a psychopathic stalker that has him lifting his jittery fist to the door and giving it a few quiet knocks. It still sounds too loud in the silent corridor, but he stands there for at least a couple minutes and nothing happens.

His heart is pounding a very fast-paced, anxious rhythm as he knocks again, a little louder this time and he’s convinced himself that the neighbours are going to come out and demand for him to shut the hell up, but… nothing happens. Again.

He can’t knock any louder than that. He just can’t. Maybe he could just go hide in the stairwell until morning. 

His hands are sweating now. He feels a little nauseous. He takes a deep breath and raps on the door full force before he can stop himself. If he doesn’t get an answer this time he’ll just have to figure something else out. 

But he hears something on the other end of the door after a moment, a quiet shuffle of footsteps and he didn’t think it would have been possible but his heart starts beating even faster then. He doesn’t even have an apologetic speech prepared yet. 

The door opens and there Dan is, shirtless and sleepy eyed and curly haired and yawning. He reaches up and rubs his eyes like a toddler who’s just woken up from a nap. “Hey,” he croaks.

“Hi,” Phil croaks back, trying to will his pulse to slow before he has a genuine heart attack. He knows it’s really not that serious, but sometimes his body just refuses to listen to the rational corner of his anxiety riddled brain. 

Then Dan frowns. “Did you leave?”

God, Phil thinks. He’s so… cute. “Uh… yeah.”

“You didn’t wake me.”

“No,” Phil says. This isn’t helping him feel more at ease; he really should’ve practiced a convincing excuse. “Sorry, I didn’t want to bother you.”

“You didn’t have to leave.”

Phil battles internally with the extreme discomfort of slinking back after sneaking out and the warmth that seeps into his chest knowing Dan had expected— and possibly even hoped— to wake up with Phil still laid next to him. 

“Sorry,” he says again, because what else can he really say? 

Dan shrugs. “Did you forget something?”

“Uhh… actually, my phone is dead.” He fishes it out of his pocket and holds it up as proof before realizing that’s stupid. “And it’s kind of like, storming outside.”

Dan turns his head round to looks out the giant window in his lounge. “Fuck,” he murmurs. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, so… I really hate to bother you, I’m really sorry I had to wake you up, but… I was wondering if I could just charge my phone a bit?” His voice has gone a bit pitchy with the nerves. “I can’t call a car or a mate or anything with a dead phone.”

Dan rubs the heel of his palm into his eye. He must have been dead asleep when Phil so rudely pounded on the door. “It’s like the middle of the night, innit?” Dan asks. 

“Uhh, I don’t actually know what time it is,” Phil admits sheepishly. “Sorry.”

“No, I didn’t mean like—” Dan steps back to let Phil in. “Come.”

“Thanks,” Phil says stepping inside.

Dan closes the door and continues. “I just meant like, it’s late. You don’t need to call a car. You’re welcome to just stay here. It looks fucked out there.” 

Phil’s skin crawls with the awkwardness of it all. “I really don’t wanna impose.”

Dan cocks his head to the side a bit. “You’re not. I didn’t even know you’d left.”

“I… didn’t mean to fall asleep.” Phil fumbles over his words. 

“That’s just what happens sometimes when you come your brains out, yeah?”

Phil’s brain kind of short circuits at that and he doesn’t have time to think of anything witty or suggestive or even coherent before Dan is making a regretful face and shaking his head. “Fuck, sorry. No filter when I’m still half asleep. Besides, that was just me that had the spectacular orgasm, not you. I don’t know if you…”

Phil feels suddenly emboldened by Dan’s lack of filter and seeming reluctance for Phil to leave his flat tonight. Also he just looks really good stood there with his gorgeous sleepy face and bare chest and Phil’s so overwhelmed with relief that he can feel the tension in his body beginning to dissipate. “I did,” he says quietly. 

Dan smiles, a shy thing that dimples his cheek as he casts his eyes downward and— fuck. He really is adorable. Phil’s always thought so, ever since he was twenty two and watching Dan waffle about butter fingers through a computer screen. But this is something else entirely.

This is Dan smiling sweetly and looking abashed because of something Phil said. Phil likes it. A lot.

“Well… good. I’m glad,” Dan mumbles. He seems genuinely caught off guard by this information, which doesn’t make sense to Phil as he’d been more vocal than possibly ever before in his life, fueled by rum and the giddy disbelief that he was having real, honest to god sex with Dan Howell. 

Actually, that still feels a little like a dream.

“Ok,” Dan says. “I promise I’ll stop making things awkward. I’ll even go put a shirt on. Give me your phone, I’ll plug it in for you.”

Phil digs it out of his pocket and puts it in Dan’s hand. “Thanks,” he says, and then, still feeling a little burst of bravery, “You don’t have to put a shirt on.”

“Are you gonna stay tonight?” Dan blurts. 

Technically, Phil could probably leave in like twenty minutes, as soon as his phone had enough battery to call a cab. It might take a while to find one and he’d definitely get soaked even just walking from Dan’s building to the street, but he’d make it home eventually.

“Can I?” he asks, because he kind of really wants to stay now, but he’s too afraid to just go ahead and say that. 

Dan smiles. “Take off your shoes. I’ll make us some coffee.”

“You don’t have to stay up,” Phil says, toeing his shoes off. “I’m putting you out enough as it is.”

“Phil,” Dan says, giving him a look of mock annoyance. “Kindly shut up and accept my gracious hospitality, mate.”

“Ok sorry. Thanks,” Phil chuckles. There’s a surprising warmth in his chest just at the fact that Dan had remembered his name and used it so casually. “Coffee would be great.”

He follows Dan into the kitchen. This flat is so small that the kitchen isn’t even a separate room but more an extension of the lounge that happens to contain a fridge, a stove and a few cupboards. And off to the side, a little white table with a chair on either end. 

That’s where Phil sits as Dan fills his kettle with water and puts it on to boil. He’s still very much shirtless and Phil is very much staring at his back and the hint of muscle that moves in his shoulders as he reaches up into the cupboard to grab two mugs.

“Oh,” he says, turning around. “I guess I should’ve asked if you’d prefer tea.” He smiles when he catches Phil looking at him.

Phil holds his gaze so as not to embarrass himself by acting like a primary school child with a crush even though that’s exactly what he feels like. He shakes his head. “I’m a coffee guy.”

“Well c’mere coffee guy, come grind the beans while I go put on a shirt.”

“I thought I was just supposed to accept your gracious hospitality. You didn’t say anything about putting me to work,” Phil quips, but he still stands up. It’s almost unsettling how easy it feels to bant with this person he really doesn’t know at all. “Besides, I don’t wanna make it easier for you to put more clothes on.”

Dan chuckles. “Either I put one on or you take yours off. Only fair.”

“If you wanna get me naked again you’re gonna have to work harder than that for it.” 

Dan huffs a surprised noise.

“Sorry,” Phil mumbles. “It’s possible I’m still slightly drunk.” He’s not, but he thinks it’s a good excuse.

“Mhm,” Dan hums doubtfully. “Sure.”

Phil gets up from the table. “Go put on a shirt,” he says, walking over to the counter and snatching up the bag of coffee. “I’ve got beans to grind.”

Dan comes back a few minutes later wearing a green and brown camouflage shirt. Phil hadn’t noticed before but his sweatpants are actually more like pyjama bottoms and they appear to be Game of Thrones themed. He looks kind of a mess and the shirt is seriously ugly but Phil finds it almost overwhelmingly endearing. 

Phil’s still stood at the kitchen counter and Dan comes up beside him, bumping his hip into Phil’s and reaching up into the cupboard to pull out a coffee press.

“So fancy,” Phil says. “I still just drink instant.”

Dan looks horrified. It makes Phil giggle, like proper giggle. That primary school crush feeling doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. They’re just stood there kind of staring at each other, Phil grinning and Dan grinning back in spite of his apparent efforts to continue his disapproving glare at Phil’s substandard taste in coffee.

Dan has nice lips. They look kind of chapped but a deep pink colour that captures Phil’s full attention. He knows he spent the better part of the late hours of the night kissing those lips but he doesn’t remember the details enough to stop him wanting to lean in right now and taste them again. 

There’s a little fleck of white in the corner. Phil starts to reach up his hand before he catches himself and instead murmurs, “You’ve got something…” He rubs a finger against his own mouth to indicate to Dan what he’s on about.

Dan smiles sheepishly and wipes at his lips with the sleeve of his shirt. “Toothpaste,” he mumbles.

“You’re gonna drink coffee right after brushing your teeth?” Now it’s Phil’s turn to be horrified. 

“Is that bad?” Dan asks, dumping the grinds into the press and picking up the kettle. “My teeth felt gross. I can’t believe I fell asleep without brushing them, I never do that.”

Phil smirks but bites back his retort about coming and brains. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess mine don’t feel the best right now either.”

“I have a billion spare toothbrushes in the suitcase in my bedroom if you wanna grab one and brush your teeth while I finish this up,” Dan offers.

His curiosity is piqued, but Phil quashes it for now. “I can’t decide what I want more, clean teeth or coffee that tastes like coffee.”

“Dental hygiene is important. I’ve got floss in there too.”

Phil laughs. “Fine. Be right back. But I refuse to floss.”

He walks down the hall to Dan’s bedroom. It looks a lot different with all the lights on, still small but warmer somehow. He sees the suitcase as soon as he steps into the room. How had he managed to miss it before? It’s thrown open, clothes and things overflowing out onto the carpeted floor. 

It registers to him then the trust Dan had shown him so readily by allowing him to come into his room and rifle through a suitcase full of personal items just so he could clean his teeth. He almost feels guilty about it, worried he’ll find something Dan had been too tired or hungover to remember was contained within the case, but almost right away he sees a load of toothbrushes scattered in amongst the clothes, just like Dan had said. He grabs one and heads for the toilet. 

He groans when he looks in the mirror. His hair is a right mess and his eyes are bloodshot and ringed with purple bruises of proof that he needs to go home and sleep for a whole day to recover from his night of questionable decision-making. He kind of wants to open up the medicine cabinet and see if Dan has some hair product he can use to salvage his poor pathetic-looking quiff, but that feels too much a violation of the kindness Dan’s shown him tonight. He’ll just have to suffer through some unflattering bed head.

What he can do is splash some water on his face and brush his teeth. It doesn’t make him look any more put together but it does make him feel better. 

Dan’s got bed head too, Phil thinks as he rejoins him in the little kitchenette, only his actually looks really cute. It’s curly and fluffy and disheveled in a way that looks a lot more purposeful than Phil’s droopy fringe. But it doesn’t matter, clearly, because Dan beams when he sees that Phil has returned. It’s really a gorgeous smile, and Phil has a little flashback to the years and years of Dan’s videos he’d watched and smiled at every time those dimples made an appearance.

“What d’you take?” Dan asks.

“Um, milk. And two sugars.”

“You like it sweet,” Dan muses as he stirs them in. He hands Phil a mug with a picture of Big Ben on it.

“Nice,” Phil says. 

Dan nods. “I’m giving you the nice shit. Just got that like a week ago.”

“Cheers,” Phil says, holding it up for Dan to clink his against. He takes a sip and Dan looks mildly horrified. “What?” Phil asks, enjoying the burn of fresh coffee as it slides down his throat and warms him from the inside. 

“It’s like, a billion degrees,” Dan says.

Phil shrugs. “It’s good. Way better than my mum makes.”

Dan smirks and cocks his head slightly to the side. “Your mum in the habit of making your coffee for you?” he teases. 

“Um. Actually, yeah. I kind of… live with my parents.”

“Oh.” Phil knows Dan feels awkward because he immediately goes to take a sip of molten hot coffee he’d just scolded Phil for drinking. “Ow, fuck,” he mutters. “Hot.”

Phil feels awkward too. He’s just admitted to danisnotonfire that he still lives with his parents. And usually he’s not embarrassed about that, but right now he is. It seems like Dan thinks he should be and it makes Phil’s stomach sink. He should’ve known he wasn’t cool enough to keep this guy’s attention past the bravery and sexual inhibition the drinks had afforded him. 

They’re still stood in the kitchen and it hadn’t before but now it feels almost excruciatingly awkward and Phil has half a mind to chug his coffee down and ask Dan to ring a cab for him. He’ll take his chances with getting soaked to the bone and dying of hypothermia or getting struck by lightning if it means not having to feel himself growing more uncool by the second in the eyes of a man he’s had a passing fancy for for the better part of the last ten years. 

“D’you wanna go sit?” Dan asks.

“Yeah,” Phil croaks, because he’s lost the will to be brave almost as soon as he’d mustered it up.

He follows Dan the few steps it takes to get to the sofa in the lounge. They sit on opposite ends and Dan stretches his legs out and crosses them at the ankles on the coffee table. Phil goes for something he hopes looks a lot more casual than he actually feels, crossing one ankle over the other knee. He takes another sip of coffee because it really is good, even if it had prompted him to out himself as some kind of strange mama’s boy. 

He expects Dan to turn on the tv or something, but instead he turns to look at Phil and asks, “Is it weird that I kind of love storms?”

Phil smiles, bad feelings starting to melt away already. “If it is then I’m weird too,” he says. “I love lightning especially.”

“Only if I don’t have to like, go be out in it,” Dan clarifies. “Then it can bugger off.”

“Definitely. Hence why I came back up here like a weird stalker.” 

Dan smiles. “I don’t mind,” he says softly. 

“You don’t have to like, work tomorrow or something, do you?” Phil asks. 

“Technically I do but not til like three pm and I can sleep in the car.”

Phil raises his eyebrows. That sounds like complete gibberish but Dan doesn’t appear to be sharing any more information and Phil feels too awkward to ask, so he says what he thinks is the polite thing. “You really don’t have to stay up for me.”

Dan takes a loud slurp of his coffee. “Too late. I wouldn’t be able to sleep now even if I did want to. Which I don’t. Half the time I’m still awake by now anyway.”

“I know,” Phil says without thinking.

Dan gives him a quizzical look. Not unkind, but definitely confused.

Shit. Phil doesn’t remember all they’d talked about at the pub. Maybe they hadn’t really done all that much talking at all. Maybe Dan doesn’t even know that Phil used to be a fan.

He does now.

“Sorry,” Phil mumbles, mortified yet again. This night has probably taken years off his life for all the stress. “I guess I just remembered that video you made once about insomnia.”

“Oh. So you’ve seen my videos.”

Phil wants to dive out the window. He tries to play it as cool as he can given the relatively insane situation he finds himself in. “I’ve seen a few.”

It’s a filthy lie. Phil’s seen them all, most of them more than once. But he’s certainly not about to admit that. 

“Phil,” Dan says, suddenly serious.

“What?” If he didn’t know better he’s swear his stomach just dropped out his ass. 

“Are you… a danosaur?”

Phil looks at Dan. Dan’s face breaks into the most enormous shit eating grin Phil’s ever seen in his life.

“Shut up,” he mumbles. “I hate you.”

“Mmm, don’t think so,” Dan teases. “All signs point to you being rather fond of me, actually.”

“Lies and slander,” Phil says.

Dan giggles and it’s really freaking cute and eventually Phil has to force himself to look away. He drinks more coffee to distract himself and watches the rain and lightning out Dan’s window.

A silence falls between them but it feels better than the last one. Phil’s still saying things that are making him look stupid, but somehow it doesn’t feel like a bad thing. 

Dan breaks first. “So,” he says, after a particularly violent crash of thunder. “Tell me more about how much you love me.”

Phil snorts. 

“No seriously, stroke my ego a little.”

“That’s not what you were asking me to stroke earlier.” No sooner have the words left his mouth than his heart is racing uncontrollably. What the actual fuck is wrong with him today?

“Wow,” Dan murmurs. 

“Sorry.” Phil pulls his knees up and hides his face behind them. “I’m not usually this awkward.”

Phil can’t see Dan anymore but he hears in his voice that he’s smiling when he says, “Why do I feel like that’s definitely a lie?”

“Fine it’s a lie,” Phil admits. “But I’ve been told it’s endearing.”

“Mm,” Dan hums. “It is.”

“I’m extra rubbish with it tonight though,” Phil says, letting his legs assume their previous position again. “I don’t do… this.”

Dan scoffs. “I bet you say that to all the boys.”

Phil looks down the couch at him. He’s smirking. “Well, technically, I do, since that’s an audience of one,” Phil retorts.

“Same,” Dan says casually, taking a sip from his Adventure Time mug.

“What— really?” Phil asks. 

“Really really,” Dan says. “Does that surprise you?”

“Uh… yeah. I guess it does.”

Dan shrugs. “I’m not really good at casual.”

“Oh,” Phil murmurs, rather stupidly. It’s not lost on him how warm that makes him feel. “It seemed like— you seemed to know what you were doing, earlier.”

Dan chuckles. “Mate. I barely did anything.”

Phil frowns. “What d’you mean?”

“From what I recall it was you who did most of… everything.”

“I’m talking about at the bar,” Phil clarifies.

“So am I.” Dan cocks his head. “D’you not remember?”

Phil revisits his fantasy of diving out the window. “I guess not,” he croaks. “Was I awful?”

“No, dummy. Obviously not or you wouldn’t be sat here in my lounge drinking my expensive coffee out of my newest mug.”

“I distinctly remember you insisting on trying on my glasses,” Phil says defensively. 

“Yeah, you’re blind, buddy.”

“And you asked me to come back to yours,” Phil says. In talking about it, pieces of the night’s events are starting to come back to him. 

“Yeah but you were the one who came up to me initially,” Dan points out. “You said, ‘Hey Dan, what’s up?’” 

“No I didn’t,” Phil says. He knows it did. He’d kind of just like to pretend he didn’t. He’d already had a few drinks with Ian and Lauren by then or else he never would have had the balls. 

“You did. It was well cute. Your type was never really my demographic so it was a nice surprise.”

“My type?”

“Yeah,” Dan says. “Adult. And y’know… male.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Phil pushes his glasses up and rubs at his eyes. “So you knew the whole time I was a…”

“Stan?” Dan grins.

“A… viewer,” Phil says, clinging to the most neutral terminology he can think of. 

“Yep.”

“Jesus christ,” Phil mutters under his breath. He really and truly is a groupie, then.

“Don’t worry,” Dan says, and he scootches down the sofa a little closer to where Phil’s sat. “We didn’t talk about that stuff.”

“Why do you remember so much more than me?” Phil asks. “I wasn’t _that_ drunk.”

Dan shrugs. “You made an impression.”

Phil feels that tingle all the way down to his bloody toes. “I was embarrassing,” he says sheepishly.

“You were lovely,” Dan says. “You _are_ lovely.” He’s looking right into Phil’s eyes.

Phil’s looking back, completely lost for words. He could reciprocate the sentiment, but he’s not sure what his voice will sound like if he tries to talk just yet and he doesn’t want to risk any more embarrassment. He’s content to live inside this tiny little moment where Dan thinks he’s lovely and is sitting close enough now that Phil can see just how warm a shade of brown his eyes are.

“Can I ask you something?” Dan murmurs, without breaking the eye contact.

“Yeah.” Phil’s voice is weak but at least it doesn’t break.

“Why do you live with your parents?”

Phil snorts. The strange feeling of pulling together is broken but Dan’s words don’t actually sound rude or judgemental. Just curious.

“I guess I just… want to,” Phil says.

“How old are you?” Dan asks. Phil can’t put his finger on why, but again, Dan doesn’t sound like he’s being smug. It sounds like he just genuinely wants to know.

“Thirty one. You?”

Dan smiles. He must know that Phil already knows the answer, but he graciously doesn’t call attention to it. “Turned twenty seven last month,” he says.

“And you’ve got your own flat like a proper adult,” Phil points out, getting ahead of the teasing even though he’s quite sure none was on the way.

“I do. You can’t tell right now because of the bloody hurricane out there but I’ve also got a rather stunning view of Strangeways Maximum Security Prison.”

“Nice,” Phil says.

“It actually is. It’s a really beautiful view. Sometimes I actually stay up late enough— or early enough I guess, to watch the sun rise and it’s pretty incredible.” He takes a sip of his coffee and then adds, in a soft voice, “Maybe we’ll see one today.”

“Maybe we will,” Phil says, his own voice quiet too over the din of his pounding heart. “My parents’ house is on top of a hill so we actually have a really nice view too. You can see the whole town from the back garden.”

“And what town is that?” Dan asks.

“Uh, Rawtenstall.”

Dan smiles. “Really? We’re practically neighbours.”

Phil smiles back. 

“Can I ask why you don’t move here?” Dan asks. “It’s gotta be well annoying to live in such a small place like that. There’s not much there, is there? Like what about work?”

Phil shrugs. “I work with my dad. My parents own a bunch of businesses and me and my brother help with like, logistical paperwork-type stuff. It’s super boring, but it’s easy and I like being able to see my mum every day.”

“Wow,” Dan muses. “Does your brother live at home too?”

“No, he works from London, actually. He’s the cool brother. He’s a dj in his spare time. He’s athletic. And straight. His girlfriend is _Swedish_.”

Dan laughs. “The dj thing is cool.”

“Yeah. I’m not jealous at all,” Phil says with much sarcasm. 

“Does he know as many random animal facts as you, though?” Dan asks.

Phil buries his face in his hands. “God,” he mutters. “I didn’t.”

“You did, actually. It was very cute. Do you not remember?”

“I kind of do,” Phil mumbles. “I was sort of hoping I’d made the bit up in my head. Did we actually have sex or was that the part I made up to block out the trauma of how freaking embarrassing I am?” He keeps his hands safely pressed against his face so he doesn’t have to look at Dan’s.

“Oh, no,” Dan says cheerfully. “Sex definitely happened.”

Phil resigns himself to hiding his face for the rest of the night and living in a little skin cave of shame, but then there’s something warm wrapping loosely around his wrist and tugging. He lets Dan pull his hand away from his face. 

“I’m honestly not trying to take the piss,” Dan says. “We had a good night. I wouldn’t change anything.”

Phil just looks at him for a minute. Maybe Dan’s actually right. Maybe Phil wouldn’t change anything either. It had gotten him here in the end, right? Somehow it seems Dan actually likes him for the weirdo that he is.

“Well what about you?” Phil asks. “Do you have an older brother who’s way cooler than you?”

“I have a younger brother who definitely _thinks_ he’s cooler than me. He’s also straight. And vegan. He rides his bike a lot and takes photos of mountains.”

“Definitely doesn’t sound cooler than you,” Phil says. 

Dan puts his mug on the coffee table and then leans back against the sofa, letting his head tip back and kind of loll in Phil’s direction. “How do you know?” he asks gently. “I haven’t made a video in years. I’m not really the same person I was then.”

Phil leans forward and puts his mug down too, right next to Dan’s. Then he mirrors Dan’s posture so their heads are resting on the back of the sofa and facing each other.

“Well,” Phil says after some thought. “I know you have a little eighteenth storey flat in Manchester with a pretty view. I know you have fairy lights on your bed and you make really good coffee.”

Dan smiles. Despite the coffee he looks sleepy. Phil feels sleepy too, in a nice way. Everything feels kind of heavy and slow and warm.

“I have fairy lights in here too,” Dan says. “Wanna see?”

Phil nods. He watches Dan get up and walk away and a few moments later the room is plunged into complete darkness. Then the fairy lights come on, a long delicate string of tiny white bulbs strung up all around the room along the corners of the ceiling. 

“Wow,” Phil murmurs, still looking up at them when Dan drops down next to him. He’s closer this time. They’re still not touching but they could be if either of them reached out.

“I don’t love the dark,” Dan says.

Phil turns back to look at Dan again. “I know.” He smirks a little.

“That’s so weird,” Dan says quietly.

“Sorry. I can stop.”

Dan shakes his head. “No, it’s fine. I just… I guess I’ve never had a casual chat with a stranger who already knew so many random details about me.”

“You never have chats with fans?” Phil asks.

“Not like this.”

“Well,” Phil says slowly. “I’m not _really_ a stranger anymore, am I?”

Dan smiles. “I guess you’re not. But I still want to know more about you.”

Phil drops his head back again and looks up at the ceiling to try to disguise how much he feels like a giddy teenager every time Dan says something nice like that.

“What d’you wanna know?” Phil asks.

Dan is quiet for a moment, presumably to think. “Well,” he says eventually. “What else do you think you know about me? I want to know about you what you know about me. It’s only fair, right?”

“Hmm,” Phil hums, his turn to think. “I know you moved here for school.”

“And dropped out a year later,” Dan adds. It makes Phil a little sad. He still sounds bitter, even all these years later. “I did move to London for a while.”

“I know,” Phil says softly, a little afraid he should stop doing that and just pretend to know less than he does.

“Right,” Dan says. “Of course you do.”

“I don’t know why you came back to Manchester though,” Phil prompts. “I didn’t even know you lived here, actually.”

Dan shrugs. “I just love it here. It’s the only place that ever felt like home.”

Phil smiles. He likes that. “I guess that’s how I feel about Rawtenstall.”

“Have you ever lived anywhere else?” Dan asks.

“Well, York. Which I think you were supposed to ask, by the way.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Where I went to school,” Phil says. 

“Oh shit, you’re right. So York?”

Phil nods.

“You’re a northerner through and through, eh?” Dan asks.

“I tried London for a while, after uni.”

Dan looks surprised. “Did you?”

“Yeah. I—” he cuts himself off. “Yeah.”

“What?” Dan asks, apparently picking up on Phil’s reticence to admit what he’d been about to admit. 

Phil shakes his head. 

“Come on,” Dan says gently. “Tell me.”

Phil takes a breath. Something about the way Dan’s face looks in the soft white light and the way his voice is warm and quiet makes Phil feel like it really is ok to talk about things he’s never really talked about with anyone else. “I moved there with my boyfriend from uni. He wanted to go and I wanted to be with him.”

“And it didn’t work out,” Dan says softly.

“It did for a while. For a long time actually.” Phil looks away from Dan’s face and out the window to watch the rain sliding down the glass. It would seem the worst of the storm is over. It’s been a while since he’s heard any thunder or seen any lightning but the rain is still coming down. 

It feels appropriate for this conversation. It feels appropriate for remembering things Phil has come to terms with but still prefers not to linger on in his mind.

“What happened?” Dan asks. His voice is still so gentle, and his question doesn’t feel pushy or invasive. Phil feels like he could easily change the subject or avoid the answer and Dan wouldn’t press.

Phil kind of wants to answer though, for whatever reason. “He was ready to be out. I wasn’t.”

“Fuck,” Dan murmurs. 

“Yeah.”

They’re quiet for a while, Phil remembering that sweet man he loved so much and letting his heart feel that little pang it always does when this particular nostalgia hits. It doesn’t tear him up like it once did to remember bright blue eyes and the messy brown waves that would always fall into them. In the end they had wanted different things and Phil has had years to come to terms with it. 

“Can I ask you something?” Dan’s voice pulls Phil back from that melancholy. 

“Yeah,” Phil says. He thinks he’d probably answer anything at this point.

“Are you out now?”

Phil smiles. “I ended up here, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Dan says. He doesn’t sound convinced. “I’m just like slightly paranoid now that I pushed you or something.”

“Nah, definitely not,” Phil assures. He slouches down a little further into the sofa cushions. “I’m mostly out, I guess. People who know me know. I’m not advertising, but I’m not hiding, y’know?”

“Sure,” Dan murmurs. 

“What about you?” Phil asks. This is one question he actually doesn’t know the answer to already.

Dan looks at him with his head cocked and an expression on his face like this is the one question Phil _should_ know the answer to.

“You never were on your channel,” Phil says defensively. 

Dan rolls his eyes. “Didn't stop people from talking about it constantly.” He sounds a touch bitter, for which Phil can’t really blame him.

“Yeah,” Phil says sympathetically. “That must have been rough.”

Dan shrugs. “To be honest it was all mostly pretty rough.”

“What like, making videos?”

“Making videos was the easiest part,” Dan says. He slouches down so he and Phil are at the same level. “Anyway, if you wanna know my profound musings on youtube fame, sexuality and mental health you’ll have to buy the book.” He winks.

Phil stares at him blankly. “What? What book?”

“Phil, honestly. What kind of stan are you?”

“I said I was a viewer!” Phil protests. “I don’t, like, stalk your every move.”

“So it’s just a coincidence we ended up in the same bar on the same night?” Dan asks, cocking an eyebrow. 

Phil looks him dead in the eye. “Maybe it’s fate.”

Dan clicks his tongue. “No such thing.”

“Well I think there is,” Phil says defiantly. He knows it makes him sound like a superstitious fool, but it’s what his mother had brought him up to believe.

“So you think you were fated to meet me?” Dan asks.

“Maybe _you_ were fated to meet _me_ ,”  
Phil counters.

Dan smiles all warm and dimpled. “Maybe I was,” he murmurs. He moves a little closer. 

“So,” Phil says after some unknown number of minutes spent staring into chocolate eyes, “what’s this about a book?”

“I wrote one,” Dan says simply.

“You wrote a book?”

“Mhm.”

“When?” Phil asks. “How did I not know?”

“Because you’re just a casual fan, right?” Dan says, grinning. “You don’t stalk my every move.”

“Don’t think I actually used the word casual,” Phil says. “Especially not back when you were making videos.”

Dan looks down into his lap, shaking his wavy fringe down over his forehead. Phil can’t say Dan’s blushing because there’s not enough light in the room to tell, but he’d put actual money on it if he had to.

“So you liked me a bit,” Dan says quietly.

“A lot,” Phil corrects. “My style was a lot different from yours but I did love yours a lot. I could always tell how much effort you were putting in.”

Dan looks over at him with a frown. “Your style? What d’you— did you make videos too?”

Phil nods. “Mine never took off like yours did. But anyway, that’s not what we’re talking about.”

“We are now,” Dan says. “If I go get my laptop will you show me your stuff?”

“God, no,” Phil says, horrified. “Please no. I’ve embarrassed myself enough tonight.”

“Tell me your username at least so I can look later.”

Phil shakes his head. 

“Are they that bad?” Dan asks.

“I mean… no? I don’t know. I don’t think they’re _bad_ , they’re just… weird. People always told me they were weird.”

“Did you like them though?” Dan asks softly.

That pulls Phil up short. He’s so used to scoffing at this thing he used to do in his early twenties when he was fresh out of school with a degree in editing and special effects and eager to put those skills to use. He’s so used to self deprecation, to passing youtube off as a silly phase that he’s glad he’d grown out of long ago. He’s not used to having someone ask him about it without the intent of making fun of him for it.

“Yeah,” Phil says after some thought. “I liked them.” Because he did. People were right, his videos usually were kind of weird, but to him that felt like a virtue and not a flaw. 

“Tell me your username,” Dan says again, gently.

“Only if you promise not to look til I’m gone,” Phil says.

“Promise.”

“Ugh, I don’t want to say it,” Phil groans. “Besides, we’re supposed to be talking about your book, not my failed youtube career.”

“Mine failed too,” Dan says. “That’s why I wrote a book.”

“Did it fail?” Phil asks. “I thought it was more like you walked away.”

“I walked away when I stopped recognizing the person looking back at me in the mirror every day. I had to hide so much and lie about so much.” 

Dan shifts a little, an uncomfortable fidget that Phil’s not sure is prompted by how long they’ve been sat here or by the subject matter of their discussion. Phil stays quiet though, leaving Dan the space both literally and figuratively to work through it. 

Dan is staring out the window at the rain when he continues. “It’s hard to describe the way it fucks with your head to read people picking apart every single aspect of your life and using it to pass judgement on your worth as a human being. I mean it wasn’t even really a life there by the end. I lived and breathed the channel and I was so fucking depressed and paranoid and lonely I couldn’t get out of bed most mornings. So I dunno. It failed because eventually I had to let it fail, I guess.”

“Christ,” Phil murmurs under his breath. 

“Sorry,” Dan says, smiling and shaking his head like he can physically expel the recollections from his mind. “This is why I needed to write the book. I had to put this stuff down into coherent words so I wouldn’t just be thinking about them all the time and letting them rot my brain. I guess it didn’t fully work.”

“Maybe I should be glad things turned out the way they did for me,” Phil muses. “That sounds really awful.”

“I’m definitely better off now,” Dan says.

“I need to read this bloody book.”

Dan grins. “I can give you a copy if you want. I have a bunch in my room.”

“Really?” Phil asks. 

Dan nods. “If you want to hear me read an excerpt and sign it for you all you have to do is join me tomorrow in Basingstoke.”

Phil does that thing where he stares blankly, no idea what Dan’s on about. “Basingstoke?” he asks.

“Next stop on the tour,” Day says.

“Tour?”

Dan laughs. “Yes Phil. I’m halfway through the UK leg of my book tour.”

“But you’re home,” Phil says thickly.

“Mhm, because today’s tour stop was Manchester, which just happens to be where I live.”

“Oh. So you had a…” He can’t think of the word. “Thing? Today?”

“A signing, yeah. And then I went out for a drink with a few crew people and met this fit guy with really bad eyesight.” He grins.

“Wait, you were there with other people?” Phil asks, horrified.

“Yeah. You were too, weren’t you?” Dan asks.

“Uh… yeah. Fair enough.”

“It was a nice way to spend my last night at home for a while,” Dan says softly. “I’m glad you ditched your mates for me.”

“I feel like an ass, but… I’m glad I did too,” Phil says. “And I’m glad you ditched yours. Although I feel like I really should let you sleep.”

Dan lays his head back again, cheek resting on the cushion, looking at Phil with half lidded eyes. Phil knows it’s because Dan is tired, but he can’t help feeling it’s a little more than that, the look on Dan’s face he can only describe as sultry in his own sleep deprived brain. 

“Don’t wanna sleep,” Dan murmurs.

Phil shuffles a little closer to Dan and lays his head back too. They’re close enough now that Phil can see the faint smattering of freckles across the bridge of Dan’s nose. “What do you want?” 

“Just this,” Dan says. “This is good.” His voice has dropped down into something a little huskier and it sends a shivering tingle up Phil’s spine.

“You’re gonna be exhausted tomorrow,” Phil says.

“Worth it.”

“Yeah,” Phil all but whispers. “For me too.”

Dan smiles, almost like he wasn’t entirely sure Phil was going to reciprocate. “Can I ask you something?”

“Mhm,” Phil hums. 

Dan hesitates a moment before he speaks. “Would you have still come up to me if I wasn’t…”

“You?” Phil offers.

Dan nods. 

“I… I don’t know.” He watches Dan’s face carefully, praying it won’t fall. Praying he won’t look hurt.

He doesn’t look hurt. At least Phil doesn’t he think he does. “Is that bad to say?” Phil whispers. “I’m just trying to be honest.”

“It’s not awful,” Dan says softly. “I’m glad you can tell me the truth, even if it’s not necessarily what I want to hear.”

Phil’s stomach drops. So he _is_ hurt.

“It’s not like that,” Phil says, quiet but urgent. “I’m not like— I wasn’t trying to—” He stops, takes a second to close his eyes and take a breath. “You’re not just a notch in my bedpost, Dan.”

Dan smirks. 

“What?” Phil asks. He’s so bloody confused.

“Just trying not to make a Fall Out Boy reference,” Dan says. “It’s possible I use to humour to cope with my pain. You probably already knew that, though.”

“I’m not trying to cause you pain,” Phil says. “Let me speak, mate.”

“Ok, sorry,” Dan says, smile fading. “Go on.”

“It’s just that I’m like… awkward. Like really awkward, socially. I told you I don’t do this and I wasn’t kidding. I would never trust some random stranger enough to just sit down next to them and strike up a conversation, let alone go back home with them.”

“But you did,” Dan says quietly.

Phil shakes his head. “I didn’t, because to me you don’t feel like a random stranger. I know I don’t know you really, or I didn’t when I first saw you at the bar. But it felt like I did. It kind of felt like seeing an old friend again after a long time of not seeing them.”

“Fuck,” Dan murmurs.

“So like, no. If you weren’t you, I probably wouldn’t have done anything but stare at you like a creep thinking you were hot. But it’s not because you used to be famous or anything like that. I wanted to talk to you because I already knew you were someone worth talking to.”

“Like fate,” Dan says.

“But you don’t believe in that,” Phil whispers. His heart is racing as he stares into Dan’s eyes, his stomach fluttering like he’s standing on the ledge of something very very high. He’s going to fall, he can feel it in his bones.

“Maybe tonight I do.” Dan shuffles over until they’re as close as they could be, the sides of them pressed together in a firm line of warmth.

“And in the morning?” Phil asks.

Dan smiles. “I’ll let you know.” He leans in slowly, so slowly, every inch closer seeming to last an eternity.

Phil doesn’t move. He keeps his head still, keeps his eyes on Dan’s mouth, on pretty, chapped pink lips until he can feel the warmth of the breath that’s breathed out from between them. 

Dan stops there, his nose touching Phil’s and even that’s enough. That’s enough for Phil to know this won’t be the last time they do this. If he’s lucky enough to fall asleep next to Dan again he won’t be sneaking out. He’ll be looking for excuses to stay.

Phil closes his eyes when he feels Dan’s fingers brush his cheekbones, hands coming to rest cupped against his jaw. They’re big hands, and they feel good holding his face like that. It jolts him with a pleasant memory, of those big hands not just on his face but everywhere, pulling off his clothes and touching him in places that made him feel good, but somehow this is better. 

This quiet, gentle tenderness is so much better. He won’t have to remember this part in bits and pieces. This memory is going to be vivid.

It’s Phil who finally closes the distance, reaching out to rest his hand on Dan’s hip and leaning in to press their lips together. That feeling of falling comes all at once and it’s even more terrifying and exhilarating than he’d imagined. 

He’s got Dan’s bottom lip framed between his own, and it’s soft but also rough, familiar but also new. The familiarity is a fleeting thing, a foggy, half formed recollection of eagerness and desperation, but the newness… the newness is everything. The newness is crisp and clear as Dan pulls back and goes in again, sucking Phil’s lip into his mouth just a little, just enough for Phil to taste coffee and a lingering hint of toothpaste. Not a combination he would have ever dreamed of describing as desirable, but now it’s all he ever wants to taste again. His hand slides up Dan’s chest to curl around the back of Dan’s head, to slide fingers into the fluff of Dan’s hair and pull him into a deeper kiss, one where he can taste more of that bitter mint.

This kiss doesn’t grow heated. They trace the inside of each other’s lips with the tips of their tongues, inhale the air the other breathes out, stroke thumbs over jawbones and trade noises of pleasure in the rain drop quietness of Dan’s flat, but it never becomes any more than that. It doesn’t progress to a place of heat and hunger, because they’ve already been there. They went there as near strangers and they’ve come out the other side as something more, something that allows them to kiss slow and wet and deep on Dan’s couch until the first rays of sun light the sky with a softer grey. 

The rain doesn’t stop. It’s not the sunrise Dan had described, no yellows or pinks or really any colour but blue and grey in a million subtle shades, but it’s still the best thing Phil’s seen in ages, because he sees it with Dan’s fingers laced between his own. 

His lips are tingling. He’s got no idea how long they’d been working against Dan’s; the whole concept of time rather ceased to exist the moment they sat down here together.

Phil thinks he would be quite happy to carry on kissing Dan forever, but then Dan is standing up and pulling Phil along with him.

“Time for me to go?” Phil asks, his voice gone gravelly from disuse and the exhaustion he suddenly feels settling into his bones. 

Dan frowns. “No you spoon. Time for bed.”

“What about Basingstoke?”

“We’ve got time,” Dan says.

“We?” Phil’s eyelids are heavy and his brain feels as cloudy as the sky outside.

“You are coming with me aren’t you?” Dan asks.

“I didn’t think… you were serious about that?”

Dan pulls on Phil’s arm until he has no choice but to move his feet and thump gently into Dan’s chest. “If your answer is yes, I was definitely serious,” Dan whispers, leaning in and kissing the corner of Phil’s mouth.

“I don’t have clothes,” Phil whispers, kissing back, sliding his hands up under Dan’s shirt.

“I have lots. You can wear mine.” Dan’s long fingers start working the buttons on Phil’s shirt open leisurely.

“I have work on Monday,” Phil murmurs, his lips still being kissed by Dan’s as he talks. 

“Your dad’s your boss, yeah?” Dan asks. “Take a holiday with me.”

Phil takes a cue from Dan and curls his fingers under the hem of Dan’s shirt, tugging up. Dan lifts his arms and Phil pulls the thing over Dan’s hand and drops it on the ground. Again there’s a familiarity in seeing Dan’s naked chest, but it’s so much sharper an image now. He drops his head down to kiss Dan’s neck just as Dan gets to the last button on Phil’s shirt.

Dan sighs as Phil kisses up to his ear. “Phil,” he breathes. “Phil.”

“Mm?”

“Take a holiday with me.”

“To Basingstoke?” Phil asks.

Dan’s hands are pushing Phil’s shirt off his shoulders and onto the ground. “To everywhere, starting with Basingstoke.”

“To everywhere,” Phil echoes. His whole body is warm and he’s half asleep and half in a wonderful kind of dream but he thinks it’s still real. Dan is really asking him this and really wanting him to say yes.

And Phil wants to say yes. Because he doesn’t want to go back home knowing Dan is going in the opposite direction, but also because he never says yes to things like this. He never says yes to something crazy, and this is crazy. It’s so crazy and there are a million reasons to say no. 

He wants to be the kind of person who says yes, even if it’s only once in a blue moon. 

“Yes,” he says, more a breath than even a whisper. 

“Yes?” Dan asks.

“Yes. I want to go to Basingstoke with you.”

“Basingstoke and everywhere?”

Phil laughs softly and hugs around Dan’s waist. “Yes. Please.”

Dan takes Phil’s hand again. “Let’s go to bed.”

Dan leads Phil to his bedroom. They take off the rest of their clothes and slip underneath that black and white duvet. Dan brackets the back of Phil’s body and Phil melts into him, all warmth and skin and the tickle of Dan’s breath on the back of his neck.

This time when Phil falls asleep naked in Dan’s bed, it’s not an accident. Maybe he’s gone mad, but when he wakes up he won’t be alone, sneaking out like he’s done something awful. He and Dan will walk out the door together, mad together, bound for Basingstoke and everywhere.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi and maybe [reblog on tumbr](https://waveydnp.tumblr.com/post/178106933927/blue-moon)


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